The Curlew 173 



The adult in winter is much paler and whiter, but otherwise the two plumages 

 are much alike. There is now a great deal of broad white border to the wing- 

 coverts ; the shaft-stripes of the upper parts, neck and breast are much narrowed, 

 on the latter quite linear ; the upper tail-coverts mostly white, only a few retaining 

 narrow dark shaft-stripes. This plumage is very seldom to be seen on our 

 coasts in perfection: the Curlews found with us in winter would appear to be 

 mostly birds of the year in the duskier dress of immaturity. 



The young in autumn are very dusky {$ Bamborough, 5, 11, '77, etc.), the 

 feathers of the upper parts margined with fulvous-brown instead of whitish ; rump 

 striped with brown ; chest and neck tawny-brown in ground colour ; primaries 

 only freckled with white on their inner webs. 



The nestling (Riding-Mill-on-Tyne, 1877) is brown-grey above, mottled with 

 sooty -black; lighter grey underneath; bill quite short and Plover-like. 



The nest of the Curlew is always on high ground in this country, and 

 nearly always upon open moor; the sort of ground seems immaterial to them, 

 wet or dry, heathery, rushy, or bare turf; they rely for safety, not on pro- 

 tective colouring, but on their keen eyesight and ceaseless vigilance. For a 

 nest the Curlew scoops out a hollow in the ground, amongst heather or 

 rushes, or in the top of a sedge-covered tussock, and deposits in it four eggs 

 upon an untidy lining of grass or leaves. The eggs are strongly pyrlform in 

 shape, and very broad in proportion to their length {i.e., 2j-2f inches by nearly 

 2), their colour dull olive-green, blotched and spotted with greenish-brown. I 

 have never shot a bird off the nest — nor do I suppose that the chance to do so 

 is often afforded to anyone — but no male that I recollect to have examined at that 

 time of year shewed bare hatching spots on the breast, as females do ; from which 

 I am led to suppose that the females do the greater part, at least, of the incubating. 

 Eggs are laid, in Northumberland, in April. Howard Saunders states that the 

 Curlew does not breed in its first spring ; the presence of evident non-breeders 

 on various parts of the coast seems to be proof of this as to a certain number of 

 individuals, otherwise the fact would be a very difficult one to prove, as there is 

 little, if any, difference in plumage between individuals after the first winter; 

 with species which do not assume the fully adult dress till the second year, as in 

 the Godwits, it would be different. 



When the Curlews have young ones, like most shy birds, they are very bold 

 and vociferous, especially if the trespasser be accompanied by a dog; the young 

 birds squatting, meanwhile, flat on the ground, and taking advantage, with a skill 

 entirely disproportionate to their age and experience, of any herbage that is capable 

 of acting as cover to them. 



